Eternity
by gabs88
Summary: Carmilla ponders consequences.


**Title:** Eternity

 **Fandom:** Carmilla

 **Rating: this chapter is k. has an m rating for future plans.**

 **Disclaimer:** Obviously, I own nothing :)

 **Summary:** this was supposed to be a one shot but now I've made plans...

 **Eternity**

If asked about eternity, Carmilla would have one thing to say.

It´s really not what it´s cracked up to be.

For one, you always outlive the people you know. Always.

She´d attended her father´s funeral. Of course, Mother had not known where she was going. Quietly, as if she could have secrets from her maker, she stole away to be in the background, and watched them lower the coffin into the earth. The wood had gleamed under the harsh sun and the sound of a sob, surely her mother´s, had reached her. It had only been fifteen years since Carmilla had disappeared, yet the memories of her parents were faded, an old painting left in the sun. When she slept, somewhere cool and dark, always near Mother, she dreamed of them at times. An echo of a laugh, a feather light touch against her hair, a gruff voice, low and gravelly and warm. But when she woke, the dreams faded as rapidly as sand falling through her fingers and she could never recall more than a whisper.

Dirt was piled on top of her father, the thudding sound almost in time with her sluggish heart, and Carmilla barely felt a thing. There was a detached tearing in her chest, but she couldn´t connect it with the sight in front of her.

What hurt more than her father´s death was the inability to feel anything about it.

Despite that, she forced herself to attend her mother´s burial a year later, to stand vigil as if her presence meant anything to anyone.

Later, in the safety of dark hours, she had sat, the night wide and the stars spread over her head like a canopy, cross legged and staring at a stone that was nothing more than a reminder.

For far too long, she´d believed herself beyond attachment to humans. How could she feel it when she couldn´t feel anything for her own parents? Humans were flesh and blood, a meal, some fun. Their heartbeats danced a delicious rhythm beneath their skin, begging to be bitten. Their skin was unnaturally soft and a joy to run her fingers over. There were times, at dances, Carmilla would lose herself talking to one-an animated girl, usually. Inevitably. Light in her eyes and life flushing her cheeks, Carmilla would find herself enraptured. A fancy of hers, she thought. An entertainment before a meal. Mother indulged it, because it assisted with her needs. Loath to admit it, Carmilla didn´t hate helping her mother collect her victims, because it allowed her time away from her vampire brethren and near the humans that always tugged at her. They were more interesting than she would ever admit, this kind that existed to feed her own. But that was all.

Nothing more.

There was no attachment.

But then Ell.

And a harsh lesson of the un-dead.

And then years and years of darkness and suffocation.

Carmilla may not need to breathe, but that doesn´t mean she doesn´t like to.

She´d lain beneath the earth, the heat pressing down on her, weak and waiting for Mother to see sense. There had never been a doubt in her mind that Mother would return for her-the doubt was in the when of it.

Finally, the earth had ripped in two and Carmilla had emerged from a battlefield to sights and sounds she was lost in.

Times had changed-the world had changed.

Mother had not.

The game had not.

Twisted under Mother´s thumb, Carmilla played as she always had, and bent the rules where she could. The sparkle was gone-parties were loud and irritated her. The girls just made her think of Ell, and remorse cut in her stomach.

For each girl she didn´t manage to tear from Mother´s clutches, Carmilla followed a ritual.

Sentimentality meant their families would eventually set up a memorial, and, years later, on an anniversary, she would sit on the grass in front of it. Legs crossed, she´d stare at the stone until it was imprinted beneath her eyelids. Slowly, she´d lay back, hands under her head, and stare at the sky, stars and clouds unable to wash the words away and she´d murmur them aloud: a beginning date, an end date and a name. A penance-a price. She didn´t dare think the words ´a prayer´. It was the only price she could think to pay.

As night faded away, so did she, back to the world she couldn´t escape.

Of course, she had not had to do that in years. Not since she´d hit Mother with a sword hilt and sent her spiraling down.

Yet here Carmilla was, again.

The circumstances different, but sitting on damp earth nonetheless, the stone in front of her almost luminescent in the heavy night.

This time was worse.

This time was pain.

There was no relaxed lie down under the stars to ponder the universe and her place in it. To ponder the games Mother played.

Mother was long dead.

No, Carmilla sat straight-backed and unblinking, staring at the rounded earth in front of her.

The coffin had been small, because Laura had been small.

Laura had asked her-had begged her, for eternity. For forever-together.

And Carmilla had said no.

The funeral was a torrid affair. Carmilla had watched from afar, a sad mirror of her father´s. When the last mourners had left, whispering about her not being there, Carmilla had sat to do what she did best. To watch and twist guilt around her fingers like a glove.

Carmilla had said no.

Regardless of her wants, she had faced the idea of eternity alone, without Laura. She had settled for maybe sixty years with her-more, if medicine kept up.

Because eternity was not all it was cracked up to be.

This was always going to happen.

Becoming a vampire changed you. It changed something essential. You weren´t you, just with a sensitivity to sunlight and a craving for red blood cells. Something altered, something shifted. Carmilla was not who she was when she had been born human. The was a darkness, a shadow. A difference. And Carmilla had never wanted to do that to Laura. Not to her. Not to Laura, who was pure light and energy in the form of flesh-warm, soft flesh-Laura who, sometimes, at night, curled herself so tightly around Carmilla she didn´t know where Laura began and she ended. Who´s skin flushed in passion, who´s heart raced under Carmilla´s cheek. Who´s breathing was the song Carmilla fell asleep to each night.

As Laura had aged, she´d pushed for it. But there had been no way Carmilla could take that light out of Laura´s eye and watch the coldness settle in. She loved Laura-too much to do that.

Carmilla had said no.

Years had passed and Carmilla had accepted the fact that the repercussions meant Laura would die, and she´d be alone.

Agony, but necessary.

Crickets chirped as if the world had not stopped. A car drove past in the distance. Wind picked up and played over Carmilla´s arms, already cool to touch, no goosebumps left behind. Her skin was as luminescent as the headstone in front of her.

And, finally, before her eyes, the earth shifted.

Fingers emerged, brown with dirt, and Carmilla swallowed and held a breath she didn´t need.

Carmilla had said no, but Laura had never taken no for an answer.


End file.
